All The King’s Men
Every time I think we have finally gotten past the shadow of the Donald Trump presidency, something takes me back and I find myself thrown back into the desperation of feeling like I’m that poor inmate stuck under the thumb of Ida Lupino, who plays an evil warden in the 1955 film Women’s Prison. The horror of that film is less about what goes on physically in the prison than the psychological battling that goes on when an inmate is trapped and gets no justice since the warden who controls the prison will not allow justice to shine through the iron grip of control. This is how I feel under the continued reign of terror inflicted on the American people and, indeed, all free people of the world, by the autocratic regimes headed by Donald Trump (out of power, but all too present still), Vladimir Putin, Premier Xi and others.
Last night I rewatched the Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie, which is about the last desperate plan to kill Adolph Hitler in 1945. What struck me more than anything was the oath that all the officers of the Third Reich had to sign. Prior to 1935, those officers had to swear an oath to serve their people and their fatherland. Then, in 1935, Hitler introduced what is known as the Fuhrer Oath, which read, “I swear to God this holy oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to the Leader of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath.” It is amazing to me that 80 million Germans allowed that to happen. This was less than 90 years ago. It is the sort of oath of loyalty that I’m sure appeals to Donald Trump and has probably been on his personal to-do list to enact as soon as he can. It would make him King Trump.
The revelations from the investigations of the January 6th Committee have become a more and more startling accumulation of clear evidence that we Americans dodged a serious bullet a little over a year ago. It has always felt a bit like a replay of Watergate to those of us who lived through that, but now there is an unmistakable similarity. The seven+ hour gap in the White House call logs that currently reflect a complete lack of incoming or outgoing calls during that time, a time when the Capital of the United States was under direct assault by a mob of Trump followers who had been incited to riot by Trump himself that morning during a speech on the White House ellipse. We couldn’t believe it in 1972 that Nixon would be so obvious and bold as to claim (via his secretary, Rosemary Woods) that there was an eighteen minute gap in the White House recordings, a gap that everyone has come to understand was simply too incriminating to allow to exist. Trump has now done what Trump does best, taken this deceitful act and driven it to the extreme by claiming that during the most turbulent time in our recent American history, no one called in or called out of the White House during the entirely of seven+ hours. Incredible and outrageous. For anyone to be so arrogant and impudent as to think this act is not glaringly obvious and unacceptable is amazing. But then, no one, least of all Trump, thinks anyone will misunderstand what this means, but rather he is so empowered by his sycophantic followers that he thinks it simply doesn’t matter. Truth doesn’t matter. He can do as he pleases, because he has always done as he pleases and gotten away with it. Such are the ways of King Trump.
Donald Trump is Ida Lupino (or more specifically, Warden Amelia van Zandt). He can, indeed, get away with murder because he feels he is omnipotent. His list of top sycophants now include Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon, Jeffrey Clark, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Ted Cruz (classmate at Harvard Law of John Eastman), Kevin McCarthy, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino. The January 6th Committee has now recommended for criminal contempt of Congress Bannon, Meadows, Navarro and Scavino. They have subpoenaed Jared Kushner and are considering subpoenaing Gini Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The web of deceit has grown wider and wider with every rock that is getting turned over. We now have a questionable half of Congress and at least some portion of the Judiciary that has questionable ties to the insurrection and they are all in service of one, most unlikely, man, King Donald Trump.
We have almost all felt over the last five years that this is an unrealistic reality show that we are watching with a plot that would never get green lighted in Hollywood because it is simply too hard to swallow. It is so very like Hitler, who was a charismatic leader for completely inexplicable reasons much as Donald Trump is such an unlikely object of the affections of the Right. What is it about people that they get so caught up in their own beliefs that they are prepared to overlook all the wrong-mindedness of their affections for one man? There must be a flaw in the fundamental character of man that we are so susceptible to such a weakness.
Last night, in preparation for my ethics class tonight, I rewatched The Social Dilemma, a Netflix documentary that discusses the perverse power of social media technology in the manipulation of the psychosocial lives of the population that uses it. It will be the topic of debate amongst my students. The questions I have composed are:
• Who is the customer?
• There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software,” said Edward Tufte, a computer scientist
• Are these tools good or bad?
• What is the problem?
• Information Age or Disinformation Age?
• Is the FB monetization model any different than any advertising model?
• Can AI solve the problem of truth?
• Utopia or dystopia?
• The power of data and predictive modeling
• Is triggering responses without awareness OK?
• Are behavioral algorithms ethical?
• Could regulation help or is self-regulation sufficient?
The thing that struck me more than anything about the documentary is how directly relevant it is to the questions I am pondering over this insurrection investigation. This line of reasoning would suggest that social media and the technology of behavioral algorithms have driven the population to its respective corners with little ability to find common ground. This do-or-die approach to social interaction is exactly what we are experiencing on the American political landscape. There is precious little room for moderation and compromise. Everything is all or nothing and that requires a symbol of righteousness that King Donald Trump has ironically taken up. And all of the King’s men have duly lined up on King Trump’s side despite the increasingly isolated stand he represents (especially thanks to the Putin/Ukrainian situation). King Trump doubled down again yesterday (he knows no other playbook) by suggesting that Putin should divulge damaging information about Hunter Biden and his supposed Ukrainian graft. That’s right up there with enjoining Hilary Clinton in a civil lawsuit for connecting Trump to Russian electoral influence. And yet, the diehard of the King’s men stand united in standing behind anything and everything he says. These are indeed strange and reminiscent times.